The Prestige of Open Badges
the trick of a TEDx Talk explained
“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts:
The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course… it probably isn’t.
The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet.
Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”.”
― Christopher Priest, The Prestige
This is my TEDx Talk “The Prestige of Open Badges — Making the invisible manifest”. (10mins)
The inspiration came from the movie “The Prestige” (C. Nolan)
The rationale is this:
We all have meaningul (learning) experiences throughout of lives — the Pledge.
Yet there is no easy way of capturing and showing them off as they are “hidden” within — the Turn.
With Open Badges can bring them out and make them visible and shareable with the whole world — the Prestige.
In preparing the talk, I tried to follow a similar structure — Pledge, Turn and Prestige.
The Pledge
“The magician shows you something ordinary..” — showing a deck of cards.
Learning is an “ordinary” act, in fact — we are all learners !
The Turn
“The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary..”- making a card disappear.
A card is an experience, in my thinking. An experience that in most cases shaped our lives but there is no way for showing it.
The Prestige
“…making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back.”
With Open Badges we can. We can “bring back” and show those meaningful experiences in way that is visual, digital, social, open.. simply super cool !
Walking the Talk
Ideas that worth spreading, are also fantastic to implement.
How can your get your first Open Badge ?
- Go to TedEd.
- Search for your favorite talk at TEDx Bologna
- THINK ! reflect on it
- create a lesson
- share it with us via Twitter @joinBestr and @TEDxBologna !
Detailed instructions here
Bonus Track
I want to share the story of this talk — it draws from an incredible year worth sharing. It is a bit personal but it really goes behind the stage, if you are interested.
To fully stretch this unique experience — and be true to the message — I decided to Open Up this talk, and make it even more manifest. I want to Open Source it !
The full script is available for everyone to edit, I am releasing it as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. I would really like to make an experiment and collectively work on it to see what it becomes — maybe material for another talk !
I am also sharing as “bonus tracks” the mind map I drew to organize ideas and the slide deck.
